The Humanarium 2: Orbital

by C. W Tickner

  Popping his head up, he ducked as a vicious kick swung past. He jabbed his pistol up into the room and fired blindly. Footfalls echoed and he knew he’d scared off the would-be hunter.

  He hauled himself up and glanced around. Blankets lay strewn on the floor among boxes of scrap metal. An assortment of objects lined a low shelf beside the blankets. It consisted of small knives and a series of square cards that looked as if they could be inserted into the doors they had passed

  Somebody’s house, Harl thought, as the others pulled themselves up into the room. Crude sketches were plastered on the walls. It looked like they had been scrawled in charcoal taken from a cold fire pit set under a rusted air vent. The only door in the room was open. It gave them a view of the Hoarder taking a sharp turn into a fresh corridor.

  As they ran after the figure, a yelp came from ahead, followed by a crash and the sound of metal grinding against metal. They followed the sound and found the torso of the Hoarder half sunk into the floor, twisting and wriggling. The Hoarder froze, hissing as Harl and Damen shone their lights on it. The green goggles dilated as they surrounded the trapped figure. Harl was careful not to tread too close. The rusting floor was clearly the cause of the Hoarders misfortune. Damen held his rifle steady as Screw knelt beside the grimy figure. He plucked the goggles off the figure’s face and tugged the black mouthpiece down. A woman stared back at them, breathing hard as her blue eyes scanned each of them in turn.

  ‘A bit stuck?’ Screw said.

  She scowled and struggled, taking a swipe at him. As her hand lifted she sunk further, just catching herself in time.

  ‘If we help you.’ Harl said, ‘will you help us?’ He didn’t know why he asked the question. The young woman was clearly wild, but something urged him to make the offer.

  ‘You can't be serious?’ Damen said, pressing the rifle against the side of the woman’s head, forcing her to stillness. ‘Let’s have done with it and move on.’ His finger twitched near to the trigger.

  ‘No,’ he said, pushing Damen’s weapon gently aside. ‘She’ll help us find this pipe by the bed through lower C. Won’t you?’

  She twitched her head to clear the stray black matted hair from her eyes and looked from the barrel to Harl, then nodded once.

  Screw and Harl hauled her up and out from the hole, careful to spread their weight and avoid another collapse.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Harl asked.

  She said nothing, but stared down through the hole, as if weighing up the drop.

  ‘Name?’ Damen growled bringing the gun up.

  She ignored the weapon and patted down her patched armour. It matched the light padded clothing that the security guards had worn when Harl first came on board, but adapted for scavenging. Extra pockets had been crudely sewn underneath the plastic armour plates and, when she opened her cloak, Harl could see a row of small sheathed knives circling her thigh. She drew out a handful of clear tubes from one of the large pockets and then bent them in the middle with a cracking sound. Light blossomed in the tubes and cast an eerie glow over her fingerless gloves.

  ‘Dana,’ she said, stepping back and dropping the brightening tubes through the hole in the floor. They became brighter and more intense as they fell, soon overpowering the ones Screw had used, and clattered to the floor far below.

  Everyone leant over the hole to peer down. Hundreds of horizontal glass cylinders were neatly lined up on the floor below them.

  ‘What are they?’ Harl asked, turning to find Dana had disappeared. ‘Dammit,’ he said.

  ‘Good at distractions that one,’ Damen said, looking both ways down the tunnel.

  ‘Maybe she’ll get stuck in another hole,’ Kane said, chuckling.

  ‘No chance,’ Screw said, ‘She’s either gone, never to return, or has scuttled off to bring her fellow Hoarders back to strip us of our treasures.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Kane said.

  ‘You go treasure hunting enough,’ Screw said, ‘you learn their ways and how to avoid them.’

  Footsteps clattered from the tunnel behind them and they turned to see Dana heaving a coil of rope towards them. She dropped it on the floor and tied one end to a pipe that ran the length of the passage. She tugged hard to tighten the knot and then tossed the rest of the rope into the hole, only to coil it around a copper bracelet on her wrist and, without a word, drop into the hole and slide slowly down.

  Chapter 9

  I have run the numbers four times and I am unable to refute the data any more. We have been travelling from Earth for one hundred and six thousand years.

  The rope led down into the heart of the room below. The cylinders turned out to be glass-covered beds. There were thousands of them in the room and most were arranged in giant racks with mechanical arms that allowed the beds to swing down. A few stood in isolation on the ground, perhaps freed from one of the racks, but quite a few had been damaged.

  ‘Well, I know what LTLS stands for,’ Kane said as he peered into one of the beds.

  ‘How’d you figure that out?’ Screw asked.

  ‘Long term life support,’ Kane said wiping away the thick coat of dust on top of the curved glass to reveal the words stamped across it in red. ‘If I’m not mistaken, this is where we slept during the journey.’

  ‘We?’ Damen asked.

  ‘Humanity,’ Kane said, turning around as he muttered something under his breath.

  ‘What?’ Damen asked, raising his rifle to eye level as he scanned the cold, dark room.

  Kane raised a hand for quiet, still murmuring to himself as he surveyed the room with his torch.

  ‘Two thousand,’ he said, triumphant. ‘In this room alone that is. I wonder how many more rooms there are?’

  ‘Five.’

  They all turned to Dana. It was the first words she’d said since giving her name and they waited for more. She shrugged, turned to point at a far end of the room, and strolled off between the empty life pods. They caught up with her as she stood facing a jumbled pile of broken pods and pipes.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Screw said, lifting an arm-sized length of pipe from the heap of rotten boxes. He inspected the find, turning it over in his hands, smiling.

  ‘Dana!’ a voice hissed across the darkness.

  They all spun, weapons out at the ready. Pairs of green eyes dotted the dark landscape, only to disappear when the beam of a flashlight got too close. There must have been thirty sets of eyes bobbing up and down behind the pods. How they’d got inside without anyone hearing Harl couldn’t tell. It was a chilling demonstration of their stealth though.

  ‘You’ve led these people here?’ a Hoarder hissed, standing up from behind a pod only ten paces from them. Dressed in a similar fashion to Dana he sported a polished copper helmet that gleamed in their torchlight.

  Damen swung his rifle around, but Dana stepped in front of him.

  ‘You would protect them?’ It was the same Hoarder from the Cormorant. His voice was a sly hiss as he spun a pistol around one finger, confident in his position. ‘We don’t need to fight any more, Dana. Come back to us and let these outsiders face what is theirs. If you’d not run off, I’d have told you we were waiting for them.’

  Dana grew red and her jaw tensed.

  ‘You try to force yourself on me,’ she said, hands clenched, ‘then tell me we don’t need to fight?’

  Her hand shot to her leg and flicked a knife out from a holster. It flew across the gap in a heartbeat, burying itself deep in the Hoarder’s throat. He toppled backwards clutching the severed artery.

  ‘Follow,’ Dana said as hisses erupted around the room and green goggles surged in towards them.

  She sprinted between the pods, hopping over them as steel spears and knives shattered the glass. Harl led the others in a mad race after her as she headed towards a double door that had been hidden by the shadows. It was jammed a quarter open and Dana twisted sideways to slip through. A sharpened disk of metal embedded itself in the wall
inches from Harl’s face as he turned sideways on to squeeze through after her. Another disk thunked into the wall as he slipped through into the corridor beyond. Damen turned, gun blazing, to hold the Hoarders at bay as Screw became wedged in the gap, unable to push through.

  ‘Dammit,’ Screw cursed, turning red with effort.

  Kane was crouched behind the pod nearest the door, firing his pistol blindly over the top.

  Damen fired at the Hoarders in turn as they pushed closer through the rows of sleep pods. They dodged his shots, leaping over the dead and ducking around the pods, while Screw frantically unclipped several of his spanners. Harl tried to pull him through, yanking his jacket, but he barely moved the large man. He looked back for help and saw that Dana waiting for them.

  She’d stopped twenty paces in to the dark corridor and was looking back down the empty tunnel towards them.

  ‘Help,’ Harl shouted as a small blade spun over Damen and Screw’s head on its way through the open doorway.

  Damen roared and attempted to hold the Hoarders at bay as he twisted left to right unleashing a torrent of shots. One hoarder sprang up on a pod and flicked a spinning plate of metal out from under his cloak. Damen swung round and blasted the Hoarder down in a shower of blue, but it was too late: the plate whirled through the air and lodged in Screw’s leg.

  Screw screamed in pain. Kane scrambled out from behind his pod and barged into Screw. trying to push the engineer through. Screw screamed again, but this time it was mixed with curses as Kane aggravated the wound. Harl grabbed Screw’s arm and attempted to pull him into the tunnel, but he was jammed in too firmly and refused to budge.

  Harl stared at Dana as she looked back at them weighing the chance to flee. She shrugged, jogged back to them, and tugged a short, thin pipe from her belt. She held it above Screws head between the doors and pressed a small button on the device. The pipe extended on both sides, shooting out with enough force push the doors apart. Screw to stumbled into the corridor, clutching his wounded leg.

  Damen grabbed Kane with one hand and practically threw him through before turning and emptying his rifle between the gap as he backed his way through the doors in to the corridor.

  Dana slipped past him as the clip clicked empty and sprinted ahead. Screw bent double and prised the throwing blade from his leg with a sickening noise of tearing flesh. He roared, jerked a hefty spanner from a belt, and swung the heavy tool at the first Hoarder to slide through the gap. The force of the blow lifted the scrawny man up in the air and threw him back into the mass of Hoarders behind him.

  Kane had pulled a panel off beside the door, his hands thrust inside as he tugged wires into position.

  ‘Got it,’ he said as sparks flashed in the hole. Lights around the door flickered on and the sound of gears whirring to life came from inside.

  Screw smashed his spanner down on the bar holding the doors apart as the enemy swarmed towards the hole. The bar buckled and the doors sealed shut.

  A flurry of sparks erupted from the control box as Kane pulled his hand out complete with a fistful of cables. He threw them to the floor and blew on his fingers to ease the burns.

  ‘Good job,’ Damen said, clicking another clip into his rifle as Kane inspected the scorch marks lining his palms.

  Silence descended, then the Hoarders on the other side began to beat at the door.

  Screw limped on and Harl hurried over to help him. Blood was oozing down Screw’s leg from the wound but he seemed to be ignoring it. Harl slipped Screw’s arm around his shoulders and tried to prop the man up as they walked.

  Kane cast nervous looks back at the door. ‘It won’t hold for long,’ he said.

  ‘Go,’ Harl shouted.

  Damen took Screw’s other arm across his shoulders and the pressure eased on Harl as they hobbled towards a crossways in the tunnel ahead.

  Dana turned back to them as if to say something, but a vent cover burst open beside her and a Hoarder pounced, knocking her sideways into the wall. The Hoarder drew a knife as Dana kicked out, launching him back across the corridor. He hit the opposite wall and bounced back. She tried to draw her own weapon, but it was too late. The attacker crashed into her and lashed out with his knife. Dana raised her empty hands in a futile attempt to stop it, but the knife sliced through her suit into her forearm and she hissed. She grabbed the Hoarder’s wrist with both hands and tried to hold the blade away as it slowly crept towards her throat.

  Damen ducked from Screw’s shoulder and sprinted at the struggling Hoarders. He raised his rifle butt and battered it into the attacker’s head to knock him clean off Dana. She sprang up and launched herself at the man, plunging her own knife between his ribs to silence him permanently.

  Damen offered her a hand but she pushed it aside, stood, and walked to where the tunnel split in two. She glanced left and right.

  ‘Behind,’ Kane said.

  Harl craned his neck around, trying not to drop Screw.

  The doors were blocked by a black cloaked figure. A Hoarder had used the ventilation system to sneak around them and was forcing the doors apart using the remains of Dana’s staff. A dozen hands squeezed in the gap, heaving it wider until the doors gave way and a flood of Hoarders swarmed into the corridor.

  ‘Help me,’ Harl said to Dana as Damen opened fire on the mass of bodies.

  She looked from him to Screw, then turned and ran.

  ‘Damn,’ Harl said.

  ‘Just go,’ Screw said. ‘Leave me.’

  Harl ignored him as they ran, then stopped when they reached T-junciton. Kane stood nervously beside Damen and both fired back at their pursuers. More Hoarders pressed past the dead and even with Damen’s accuracy it was not enough to stop the flood of green eyed men.

  Just before Harl rounded the corner with Screw, he looked back and saw Kane firing at the wall halfway between them and the Hoarders. Had he been drinking?

  ‘Aim at Hoarders, not the wall. The Hoarders!’ Damen shouted, dropping one and back-peddling.

  ‘The box,’ Kane said. He was aiming for a small square panel on the side of the tunnel.

  Damen must have realised that it was important. He sighted down his rifle and fired. The box blew apart in a crackle of electricity that turned into a fireball as the first Hoarders passed, blasting them against the walls. Darkness swallowed the broken bodies and lights went out. Green orbs bobbed in the darkness further back as the eyes locked in on them.

  ‘Fool,’ Damen said. ‘Now we’re blind.’

  ‘Wait,’ Kane said sounding doubtful.

  Red lights flickered into life as emergency power re-routed around the burnt-out box.

  ‘Move,’ Damen said, grabbing Kane’s thin arm and then dragging him down one of the corridors towards a door.

  Harl lumbered through it and concentrated on heaving Screw along with him. The passageways became a blur as he struggled. Another empty room, a corridor, a second T-junction, he was hopelessly lost, but he kept on going, heaving Screw through a final doorway.

  It was a dead end.

  What he’d thought was a T-junction was a tiny box room with a door. Looking up, he realised it was the bottom of an elevator shaft. Dana was already inside as Damen dragged one side of the double doors shut, but Kane was too slow to seal the second. A Hoarder leapt forward and thrust a knife between the gap. It sliced across Kane’s white knuckles and flailed around in search of a target.

  Dana hissed, drew a thick bladed knife and sliced it down in a two-handed grip to sever the Hoarder’s arm at the elbow. The attacker screeched in pain and Harl launched a kick through the gap to knock the Hoarder back. Kane slammed the door closed, trapping the five of them in the small space. It was black as night.

  A cracking sound came from behind Harl, followed by a radiance of white light. Dana stepped around him, holding one of her glow tubes and gave the Hoarder’s severed arm a kick. She seemed satisfied at her grisly work and slid her knife back into its hidden sheath.

  Damen and Kane pul
led out flashlights and Screw turned his headlamp on.

  Kane cursed as he unzipped one of the medical kits and began bandaging Screw’s thigh.

  ‘How many tools do you need?’ he said, trying to avoid the ring of spanners clipped against Screw’s upper thigh.

  ‘Fifty seven,’ Screw said, smiling. It turned into a tight jawed wince as Kane tightened the wrappings.

  The crash of metal on metal broke against the door, ringing out in the small space.

  ‘What now?’ Harl asked. It was only a matter of time before the Hoarders broke through.

  ‘Up there,’ Screw said, pointing to the crooked end of a broken ladder hanging overhead.

  ‘Give me a leg up,’ Damen said, raising a foot.

  Kane looked dubious, but knelt in the shallow puddle of water on the floor and clasped his hands together around Damen’s foot and lifted. Damen reached up high, straining to touch the rusted rung as Kane’s knees shook with effort. Damen pushed hard on Kane in an effort to bounce up higher, but his fingers were still too far away.

  ‘Woah,’ Kane said, loosing balance and tipping Damen to one side.

  Damen tumbled against the wall, his head narrowly missing the end of a metal pipe protruding from the steel sides.

  ‘Dammit,’ Damen spat, slumping against the wall. ‘Should have known you were too weak. What?’

  Kane was staring at him.

  ‘The pipe,’ Kane said.

  Harl realised that Kane was looking at the valve on top of the metal pipe coming from the wall.

  ‘Why is it here?’ he asked.

  ‘Hoarder’s water point,’ Screw said as the door rang loud with a series of bangs. ‘They install them here for their own use.’

  ‘Then a water deck is behind this?’ Kane said and pressed his hand against the rusting wall.

  ‘Aye,’ Screw said, rubbing his chin, ‘we’re low enough. Probably the lowest level in the ship. Why?’

  ‘We turn the tap on,’ Kane said, ‘and wait for the room to fill. The water level will rise and we can easily reach the ladder and climb to the deck above.’